Hananuma Masakichi was a Japanese artist who learned he was dying from tuberculosis. He wanted to leave a parting gift to the woman he loved. He made a statue of himself that is so life-like and realistic, people couldn’t tell which was the fake even while the real Masakichi stood next to it.

The artist bored a tiny, individual hole for every pore on his body and plucked the corresponding hair from that pore and inserted it at the exact position on the statue. In this manner he covered the entire sculpture with all of his own hair - head, beard, backs of his hands, legs, eyebrows and eyelashes. Then Masakichi pulled out all of his own fingernails, toe nails and teeth and carefully put them in their exact place on the statue. As a finishing touch he gave the statue his glasses, his clothes, a sculpting tool and a tiny mask he had made.

It was once featured in the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum in the 90’s